Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2024 i Motor Boat & Yachting

Diesel outboard engines used to have a lot in common with buses; they were both slow, noisy and to be endured rather than enjoyed. Not anymore – the latest generation of diesel outboards are fast, refined and fun to drive but they still share one thing in common with buses – you wait forever for one to arrive and then three come along at once! To be fair to the two leading players, Oxe and Cox, their 300hp models, have been around for a couple of years now, and the latest contender to arrive on the scene, Caudwell Marine’s new Axis-drive outboard (see p88), won’t hit the market until later this year. But compared to the geological pace of development prior to that, things are really beginning to motor. What’s…

Sometimes I think the weather is just seeing how far it can push me toward thinking the unthinkable (selling the boat), before reminding me why I never actually will. August was a weather write off and September was full of crazy boatshowness. Cannes was the second week, Southampton the week after and Monaco the week after that, so thoughts of boating were banished as the month flew by in a blizzard of flights, hotels, filming, editing and scheduling. By the time the dust settled, the boat had barely moved for two months. October was mostly taken up with the Fort Lauderdale show, November was cold and drab. And then, in December, the weather decided to give us some of what we were supposed to have had in August, if it…

RED ALERT In last month’s magazine you published a letter from Roger Molyneux asking what might be causing the red residue left in his fuel filters (Seeing Red, Your MBY, Feb 2024). I sent a copy of the letter and photo to my fuel contamination expert/friend, who responded as follows: “It looks like a simple case of poor quality red but without seeing it or testing it I’m just guessing. There’s a lot of reblended stock down south.” The reason he mentions blended stock is that some suppliers add FAME (Fatty Acid Methyl Ester) biofuel to their red diesel while others don’t. You’d have to have it tested to confirm it’s there. If Roger wants my friend’s contact details I can forward them on to you. Will Baker Thank you…

With ten years of boating and a Day Skipper qualification under my belt (not to mention being an avid viewer of Saving Lives At Sea and the equally gripping Deadliest Catch), I thought I was fairly well aware of the potential hazards of putting to sea. But of course accidents pay scant regard to all that, and the night my wife and I found ourselves bobbing around in the pitch black after a poorly executed transition from a tender to our boat was something of an epiphany for us. It wasn’t so much that we had lost our footing and gone in. We know that’s always a possibility, so we were both wearing lifejackets. It was two other factors that really took us by surprise. Firstly, we had never experienced…

Boats are a mass of compromises. B A perfect example is the hull shape. The best shape for space optimisation at any given length would be a rectangular box. Of course that’s also the very worst shape for seakeeping. What you need to cleave waves offshore is the exact opposite, something as long, narrow and pointed as possible to reduce wave impact to a minimum. But as if that were not enough, our beleaguered naval architects have to consider hull form. A full displacement hull that sits fully immersed tends to give the best low-speed efficiency and seakeeping but is hampered by a low hull speed. As an example, a 30ft waterline length displacement hull tops out at about 7.5 knots. If you want speed, you’ll need a planing hull…

This isn’t the usual image that springs to mind when you hear the name Riva but it does help explain why this relatively small Italian yard based on the shores of Lake Iseo went on to become one of the most iconic boat brands ever created. Remarkably the Riva yard had already been running for 100 years before it built this stunning one-off hydroplane for Count Metello Rossi di Montelera in 1935. The gentleman racer and co-owner of the Martini & Ross distillery set numerous speed records in his trail-blazing new Riva Ronzino before it disappeared from public view for 60 years only to be purchased and restored to full working order by a passionate collector in 1996. Small wonder that it makes fromer MBY editor Alan Harper’s list of…

THE FOLLY INN EAST COWES What a day – there we were, tied up at East Cowes Marina on the River Medina after a wonderful journey along the Solent. The local radio station reminded us that the weather would continue to be kind, so we inflated the dinghy and set off for some good old fashioned pub grub – yes, we were off to The Folly Inn, one of the island’s most visited establishments. The trip up the river was perfect – mirror calm and, with our electric outboard, super-quiet. But, as anyone who’s ever visited The Folly will know, that was never going to last… The Folly is a place where people go to have a drink, socialise and have fun – a pub which does food rather than…

Windy may be best known for its sleek, sterndrive-powered sportscruisers but it has also been building a handful of smaller outboard-powered sportsboats much longer than most people give it credit for. The first Windy Oceancraft 760 was launched way back in 1999 followed by the Draco 27RS in 2014. Both were well received by journalists at the time for their terrific hull dynamics and robust build quality, but the former was arguably ahead of its time and hampered by old-tech outboard engines while the latter was overshadowed by the arrival of another equally capable but more affordable newcomer – the original Axopar 28. Ten years on and the balance has shifted once again. Not only has Windy launched this much more versatile SR28 CC model but Axopar prices have been…

Very few boat builders in the world can match Galeon for the fun they incorporate into their designs. In fact, even in the shipyard’s most basic GTO line of open dayboats, each model courses through with a tangible sense of innovation. And yet if you’re keen to experience Galeon’s design creativity at its most playful and unconstrained, its multi-award-winning Flybridge and Skydeck models have generally been the place to look. So it was with a great deal of anticipation that we headed to Southampton for a sea trial of the 440 Fly at the hands of new UK importer, Argo Yachting. SEATING GALORE! When you step on board any Galeon, you immediately look for the one key design feature that enables everything else to work, and in this case, it’s…

MERCURY AVATOR 20E & 35E ELECTRIC OUTBOARDS It’s often said that the marine industry echoes the automotive industry with a lag of about ten years. But for some reason, the development of electric outboards has bucked that trend. In the car world, Tesla burst onto the scene as a brand new manufacturer of then almost unheard of electric cars, demonstrating a credible case for the technology, and it wasn’t long before the legacy manufacturers chased after them with products like the Nissan Leaf and BMW’s revolutionary i3, while Kia virtually reinvented itself with a range of funky EVs. A few years later we saw other start-ups join the fray such as BYD, Lucid, NIO and Xpeng. The marine industry, for once, played it quite differently. Torqeedo was quick to establish…

COOL RATING POSITIVELY ARCTIC Most boats are a carefully considered compromise designed to cover as many bases as possible: floating holiday home, party island, offshore cruiser – jack of all trades, as the saying has it, master of none. Safehaven Marine’s Barracuda SV11 eschews all those compromises, becoming the jack of a single trade, master of one. Its single dedicated purpose is to conquer rough water and transport its crew safely, regardless of conditions. One cubic metre of water weighs one tonne. And a big wave comprises many cubic metres. It’s why the glass on the Barracuda is one inch thick! It’s also why the bow is so pointed that it can pierce all that water and punch clean through it, courtesy of a pair of Caterpillar C9 575hp diesels.…

1 WORLD’S BIGGEST E-FOILER German start-up, Tyde, has released renderings of its first proper leisure boat, an e-foiling sportscruiser called simply The Open. Billed as the world’s largest foiling electric motor yacht, this walkaround model measures 48ft 3in (14.7m) and tops out at 30 knots. Aimed at private owners interested in the very latest sustainable boating technology, the Open’s zero-emissions drivetrain comprises a 400kWh bank of BMW i3 batteries and twin 100kW Torqeedo Deep Blue electric motors mounted on top of the rear foil struts. These should give a cruising range of 50nm at 25-knots. The Open’s efficiency is due to the two computer controlled foils that lift the main hull clear of the water at cruising speed, allowing it to ‘fly’ over the surface using very little power. It…

XO EXPLR 44 LOA: 43ft 8in (13.40m) BEAM: 12ft 1in (3.70m) ENGINES: Twin 600/triple 450hp outboards TOP SPEED: 50 knots PRICE: POA CONTACT: www.xoboats.com When an award-winning builder like XO introduces a new made the smaller models so noteworthy – and that’s exactly what the new EXPLR 44 appears to do. Like the rest of the fleet, it’s built from heavy-duty aluminium, with a plumb bow, an acute entry and a four-season pilothouse. But thanks to its extra scale, this 14-man boat is the first in the range to feature not one but two private cabins. They’re cleverly arranged too. While the central section of the boat is very deepset, keeping the weight, the windage and the pilothouse profile as low as possible, both the walkaround bow and the open…

Chartering sail and motor boats in my native Canada and around the US is something I’ve been doing for years, but I’ve always wanted to try a different style of boating on the waterways of France. Charter company Le Boat is one of the largest operators in this sector of the market with an extensive fleet of boats as far afield as Scotland and Italy, but the bulk of which are based in France. As there were four of us we opted for a 38ft Horizon 2 based on the River Saône at Saint-Jean-de-Losne in Burgundy, France, for a week in May 2023. Not only would this mean cruising through the heart of this world famous wine region but the route would allow us to enjoy a few hours of…

It has taken months of testing, weeks of analysing and days of deliberating amongst our judges but the results of our annual Motor Boat Awards can now be revealed. As always we have chosen a winner in each of our nine boat categories based on how well it performed during our rigorous sea trials but also how well it meets the requirements of its target market in relation to its size, style and price. In some categories we have also awarded a highly commended to boats which may not be as rounded as the winner but which have moved the game on in some significant way. Last but not least we’d like to thank Sleipner for once again partnering with us as the headline sponsor of the 2024 Motor Boat…

DAY 4: 13 JUNE BRIXHAM TO SCILLY ISLES, 140NM We’d made it from Yorkshire to Brixham in just three days but now my friend and crew mate Harty had to get back home, leaving me to push on alone. By 6.30am I was keen to get going so we said our goodbyes and I cast off. I’d really been looking forward to this next leg exploring the Devon and Cornish coast with its famous turquoise waters. The Scillies were also an exciting proposition but being some distance out into the Atlantic Ocean and exposed to wind from any direction, it was a big ask of my small open boat. But first I had to deal with another problem: oil, or rather the lack of it. I was fast running out of…

Commercial shipping has been moving away from paper charts and onto a plotter-based system called ECDIS for more than 20 years, and the Admiralty’s recent decision to stop printing charts by 2030 indicates the passage of travel for the leisure world as well. Many in the leisure world have already moved almost exclusively from paper chart based navigation to GPS plotters known as Multi-Function Displays (MFDs). That’s all well and good provided that you have a reliable means of checking that your plotter is as accurate as it appears to be. Tidal information is a good case in point; we used to scour the Almanac for the day’s tide and height and then calculate what the difference would be at the secondary port we were heading to. Nowadays a couple…

Back in 1968, the year in which Nimbus began building boats, Jumpin’ Jack Flash was top of the pops and the Rolling Stones were about to embark on a US tour. Fast forward 50-odd years and nothing seems to have changed; the Stones are still rocking, with another Stateside tour in the offing, and Nimbus still builds boats. But dig a little deeper and much (aside from Jagger’s wiggling hips) has altered. Call it evolution or progress but surviving the long game calls for embracing change in its myriad forms – something at which both the Stones and Nimbus excel. The first Nimbus to roll off its Gothenburg production line back in 1968 was the 26 cabin cruiser. Popular among boaters for its robust fibreglass construction, snug cockpit and familyfriendly accommodation,…